


At Least I'd Fallen Asleep in My Clothes This Time

by Enigel



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-15
Updated: 2007-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 02:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur, Ford and the improbability of cats and alcohol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Least I'd Fallen Asleep in My Clothes This Time

**Author's Note:**

> Originally meant for a ContreLaMontre prompt, but I took too much time with it; also, even though I began with Ford/Arthur in my mind, it ended up as gen. Beta by the kind and fabulous Daegaer.

Arthur sloshed on through the desolate winter landscape. There was no reason to assume this wasn’t Earth, he thought, this could be anywhere in England. There was, however, a nagging feeling to the back of his head, and that unmistakable certainty that the seasoned hitchhiker gets, that firmly insisted that he wasn’t on Earth anymore.

The piles of dirty snow were getting higher as he walked, no, as he trudged on, and the nagging feeling was getting stronger.

Suddenly he felt his whole body sliding into the cold muddy slush and he gave a short startled yelp before sinking into the oblivion of...

...waking up. Arthur looked blearily around him. The room didn’t look blearily back at him, but you got the feeling that that was just out of spite.

The nagging feeling turned out to be the book he’d fallen asleep on. The blanket was lying crumpled on the floor, probably dragged off him by the large cat that was sitting patiently by his bed. Arthur’s left foot had only made it halfway into the right slipper, when its owner stopped frozen in the gesture.

Since when did he have a cat?

He continued to put on the slippers, while keeping an eye on the intruder. The cat was also keeping both eyes on him, with the air of perpetual superiority that cats have.

Arthur got cautiously to his feet and stumbled. He was wearing a right slipper on the left foot and a knitted cap on the right one.

He looked back at the cat, terrified of what it might have done while he lost sight of it, but the cat didn’t appear to have budged. Arthur was somehow sure it hadn’t even blinked. Then, as Arthur was looking at it edgewise, tardily remembering that you’re not supposed to look a predator in the eye (and he was ready to assume anything he didn’t know the provenance of was a predator, not that experience contradicted him in any way), the cat got on its feet and hopped into the bed with the elegance that only an overweight world-weary feline can muster, and curled to sleep with its back to Arthur.

On the floor there was a large sheet of paper with a flowery letterhead that Arthur ignored, going straight for the disordered lines of text.

"Arthur, I know you don’t like animals (or do you? Hm, actually I can’t remember, but anyway, would you do me a favour and take care of him for a while? He’s got a bit of a hangover and, er, it’s more complexicated, but I’ll explain everything when I come back to collect him. Really. Just... take good care of him, for me, I mean it, that’s the most important, really.

Be a pal, won’t you?  
Zaphod."

Arthur felt a strong compulsion to close the open parenthesis, but he couldn’t decide where. Around Zaphod’s neck would be a good place, he decided, then remembered there were more than one of them and despaired.

"A friend, sorry, a _pal_ of Zaphod’s can’t be a nice guy."

"I knew you’d say that," said the cat morosely, "he was counting on it."

Arthur screamed.

Then he waited to wake up, really wake up this time. Nothing happened for a while.

Arthur firmly believed in the non-existence of prophetic dreams. He’d never had one. How likely was it that he’d start now? He did, however, go to the window and casually glanced at the skies, but they were mercifully empty of brick-like ships.

"No, it’s not the Vogons this time," said the cat.

"What do you mean this time? That the Earth is going to be destroyed by some other race? Or is it just my day that’s going to be ruined?"

"I don’t know, actually, Zaphod could still destroy Earth 2.0 if he doesn’t get the Heart of Gold under control."

Arthur noted with dulled and delayed horror that the cat’s mouth wasn’t actually moving when it... when he spoke.

"Of course not, my ancestor’s maws were not made for speaking! They were a telepathic race."

Arthur chilled again. Did this mean it could also...

"No, I can’t read minds, it’s just that you’re that bloody predictable!"

Arthur felt ridiculous asking this, but even if he were wrong, it would be very low on the scale of embarrassing things he’d done.

"F... Ford?"

"Yes, it’s me."

"Ford?!"

"I said yes, all right?"

"Ford, what’s all this nonsense?"

"It’s the Heart of Gold. It got stuck on improbability level two to the power of 233. That’s how improbable it was that I’d turn into one of my ancestors, or so Trillian says, anyway."

It was only now that Arthur registered that despite the perfect likeness, this cat was somehow entirely unlike any Earth cats he’d seen. He couldn’t have said why, but it was a general impression of, well, a ferocious and bloody-minded lack of sanity.

"I never comment anything about your ancestors having been apes, do I?"

The cat’s thoughts had a distinct sharpness in Arthur’s mind.

"You said you couldn’t read minds!"

"I can’t. I just took a guess."

"Why hasn’t Zaphod warned...? Never mind, it’s Zaphod. And how long is your, er, condition going to last?"

"I’m not sick, I’m just hung over."

"Funny, Zaphod mentioned that. What’s with that anyway?"

Cats don’t shuffle nervously. For that matter, Ford never shuffled nervously either, except on extremely rare occasions.

"There’s this legend about how they evolved. Theory had it that alcohol was the great motivator to gaining mouths instead of maws."

For once Arthur felt ahead of one of Ford’s lines of reasoning.

"And you thought you’d do a little phylogenetic jump at the ontogenetic level by isolating one of the presumed evolutionary factors."

The cat that was Ford blinked at Arthur.

Arthur blinked at himself.

Then several things happened all at once, but we’ll resume to presenting just the one, because the rest were too extraneous to Arthur and Ford’s fields of perception.

A bottle of liquid fell from the ceiling and hit the floor, right in front of Arthur, who jumped back and upwards.

Then he looked to see how the cat was doing and there was Ford curled up in Arthur’s bed.

"Hi, Arthur! How are you? It’s strange, I feel like sinking my teeth into a chunk of raw, red meat..."

His eyes glazed over and Arthur took another step back.

"Relax, I’m only joking," said Ford and grinned widely, exposing his perfect and quite sharp teeth, which Arthur didn’t find in any way reassuring.

"What I do feel like is having a drink. And guess what," he said, leaning over without actually getting out of the bed, "there’s this bottle of fine old whiskey. Now how improbable is that?"

"I’ll tell you, two to the power of 233 plus one," Trillian chirped from the door. "That’s how unlikely it was that Zaphod would fix the Heart of Gold by himself."

"But he did?"

"Yes, Arthur," she said patiently, "there’s the real Ford in front of you, isn’t there?"

Arthur muttered something about reality, but it got lost in the noise of an approaching motorcycle and no one asked him to repeat what he’d said.

It was too bad, because he also wanted to ask about the remaining improbability to be accounted for, but he was too miffed about being ignored to remember that line of thought.

The motorcycle was, predictably, Zaphod’s, who breezed in with both mouths grinning:

"Did I hear the word drink? Drink is the word for the day, pals. I’ll get us to a nice bar just over a parsec from here. Everybody’s invited, even you, Earthman, even though you looked hoopier in your dressing gown."

"No longer your pal Arthur, am I?" Arthur asked coldly and also rhetorically, since Zaphod was already speeding back to the ship.

As Trillian entered the coordinates in the navigational system, Arthur was struck by a close cousin of the thought he’d had before Zaphod’s return.

"Ford, this planet we’re going to, it’s not cold, is it?"

"Are you kidding? It’s what your species would call a tropical paradise. It hasn’t snowed in over two centuries."

Arthur would have been content with that, but the thought hit him again over the synapses.

"Is that actually 233 years, by any chance?"

"Yes," answered the computer, "and a fine 233 years they’ve been! Buckle up, folks, we’re getting there right now!"

Arthur screamed as the Heart of Gold threw them unceremoniously into white.


End file.
